Monthly Archives: May 2018

boatbuilding, geekery

Stanchion Bases

Its time to beef up the 1″ fiberglass rods that were glassed through the deck. I am bringing the handrails up to USCG standards for a Certificate of Inspection and documentation. The new handrail height will be 39 1/2 inches above deck, with an aluminum handrail. Right now they are 36 inches with para cord as the lifelines. New lifelines will be 1/8″ dyneema on 4″ spacings. It should hold Mike Tyson and Andre the Giant!

This latest project is to fabricate some nice looking bases that will glass into place above and below decks. I finally found the perfect molds- these kiddy horns from amazon. the flanges were the exactly right size, and as a bonus I now have some new boat party paraphanelia!

Some notes: After waxing the molds, I thought that I would be able to use peel ply first to get a nice surface. Disaster. So I skipped the peel ply. It is very difficult to cut the fabric to fit the whole inside circumference without wrinkles in one go. In fact, it is much easier to insert widths of fabric about 2/3rds the diameter, and then overlap with another piece. Since I wanted the finished side to be on the outside of the coves, the horns were used as female molds. lighter fabric works best. I used 9 oz uni first then some scrap 20 oz triax, but the triax is very messy by the time you get it cut that small, wet it out and lay it in there with a tongue depressor. Biax tape would be better.

Once cured they popped right out. I rough trimmed the edges with some large tin snips. It’s easier to do that when they are still green. Next operation is to cut to correct height, so that the stanchions will fit (shown), then slip them over the existing stanchion rods, fill with structural bog and set them into place.


local history

Von Reck’s Voyage

Von Reck’s Voyage to Georgia in 1736 was edited by Kristian Hvidt, who wrote this:

“In 1976 a Danish scholar, searching through heaps of manuscripts in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, found an old sketchbook, lost and forgotten for two hundred years, with some fifty beautiful drawings of colonial Georgia. The drawings belonged to, and were presumably made by a twenty five year old German colonist, Philip Georg Friedrich von Reck, who came with the Salzburgers to Georgia in 1736. When he died in the 1790’s the drawings were given to the King of Denmark, in whose library they remained unknown for two centuries…von Reck kept a vivid diary and made detailed pictures of what he saw in Georgia- plants, animals, Indians, houses, boats, settlements and scenes of work and play…”

These two sketches are of some of the first dwellings built by settlers on St Simons, at Frederica.

The supreme commander of the Yuchi indian nation, whose name is Kipahalgwa.
(1) The topknot on his head is slightly painted with red color
(2) The face is painted in this way with the black signs on the temple, the breast and neck burned
(3) A bunch of soft feathers drawn through the ear, from which a pearl is hanging
(4) A shirt
(5) Leggings
(6) Shoes

Note:Von Reck didn’t know the word “tattoo,” first introduced in Europe by Captain Cook in the 1770’s, so he used the word “gebrannt,” burned.

“The flying squirrel is almost like a mouse and has two white skins under its belly that it spreads out when it wishes to fly fly from one tree to another” The Salzburgers caught the squirrels and made them into a good soup.

Tha Cardinal or Redbird,
richmondena cardinalis (Linn), is shown at right. the Bluebird, Sialia sialis (Linn.), is shown below. “Zishagzaien” is the Yuchi word for “Wajo” the Creek word for flying squirrel. “Zozassi” is Yuchi and “Fu-zag-ta” Creek for Redbird. “Jo-wei-ka is Creek for Bluebird.

another excerpt: “On the seacoast here there are many pelicans.
The Pelican is almost as large as a goose, its feathers are white mixed with dark grey, and it beak is two inches wide and seventeen inches long. It throat and breast have a bare soft skin that is also very artfully mixed with bright and dark grey colors, and it has a big sack or crop under its neck in which it collects oysters and mussels and keeps them there until they open, whereupon it spits them out and picks out their meat. People shoot the Pelican for its sack, from which they make a good tobacco pouch, because it can hold a pound of tobacco. Its feet are like goose feet. It sits very sadly, as though it were sleeping. It holds is head straight, and the end of its beak rests on its breast. It flies very heavily and slowly and lives entirely on fish. it is a fable to say that it opens its breast in order to give blood to its young. The young pelicans are considered good to eat, yet they taste very fishy.”